Living in the Background
by LyricKash
Summary: Dru Easton lived in the background during the events of the Twilight Saga;  her part in the lives of those involved overlooked.  Just out of reach, constantly on the edge of what was happening, what was Dru's part in the lives of Edward and Bella?


**A/N: Living in the Background is in the process of a (should the fan-fiction/time/creative gods allow me) massive update. Not that anyone has ever read this story, haha. Still, as a writer, it's difficult to let your babies go. LitB is rated M for various reasons. **

**Prologue**:

_December 31__st__ 2008_

_Forks, Washington_

Hypothesis:

Three of your friends, people you've known for years of your life, meet you one day at a park unexpectedly and recite to you a tale so inconceivable, it had to be real.

They tell you things that you'd always suspected but never dared to assume to be true.

Things like, the existence of extra sensory perception and, taking things a step further, preternatural beings — actual, real life _vampires_ — living among humans.

This excites you and terrifies you at the same time.

The idea that throughout all of time and the history of the planet, buried deep in the background was the truth to the myth behind the creatures of the night. That they, like every story humanity had ever told, had roots somewhere hidden upon this massively mysterious floating blue-white marble.

Your interest is peaked, but unfortunately this fascinating part of the story is cut short, because a more pressing part of the hypothesis must be presented: the part that included you.

Your friends reveal that extra sensory perception had come with its advantages and disadvantages.

Advantage: The ability to read peoples thoughts or to predict the future. To stop crime before it happened or predict the rise and fall of the stock market.

Disadvantage: To know _every_ _single_ waking thought of those around you whether you wanted to or not, or to see horrible and uncontrollable events ahead for those you love.

And _you_ had the dissatisfaction of discovering you were firmly set at the disadvantaged end of both of these wondrous abilities.

For, inside Italy, half the world away, was a vampire who had taken to hiding in the darkest halls of his underground castle, as he waited patiently for the precise moment to emerge, steal, and transform what he viewed as an immeasurable treasure… _you._

Oh, but the hypothesis worsens…

For deep inside your very mind lies an illness which cannot be removed by blade or medication… _no_. The _gift_ which had been plaguing you your whole life finally revealed itself in all its humorless horror… your own body was slowly killing itself.

And the end result of this hypothesis…?

Absolutely nothing.

Because _none of it_ sounded false to me.

A hypothesis isn't real, thus why it's a hypothesis. It's a way of bending your mind around the impossible. I simply needed a way of digesting the information that was given to me. And it was the first thing that came to my mind.

As I sat on the bench with my sketchbook in my lap, my drawing pencil having long fallen from my hand into the sparkling snow, I could come to no conclusion as to how to properly absorb this information beyond the prior hypothesis.

A centuries old vampire wanted me for his obscene personal collection of living dolls.

And my brain… _my brain_… had an inoperable mass growing inside of it which would continue — as it long already had been — slowly but surely killing me.

There was a blankness in my mind, but I believed what they had told me. I don't know if I could explain exactly how it made sense. It was a knowing — a feeling deep within that reminded me of burning butterflies — which told me they were telling the truth, because that feeling never led me wrong.

And that absolutely scared me shitless.

My breath hitched as I was hit with the realization. My heart increased its rhythm, viciously beating against my chest, and I swallowed hard. This was it. This was one of those life changing moments that you can never turn back from…

_I was going to die._

Of course I pondered every possible reason how they could be wrong. That this could very well be some awfully cruel joke I was the victim of. But I knew, in my deepest heart of hearts, I knew they were telling the truth.

Through tragedy after tragedy that had befallen my life, somehow I'd found a way to move on and keep living — I was human after all, and this was the tumultuous emotional roller coaster known as life. The idea of surviving _this,_ though, was difficult for me to grasp, and the inevitability of the moment settled over me. I stared out toward the setting sun and shook my head a few times, ever slowly, refusing to release the tears that had built in my eyes.

They slid down anyway.

It was a long moment before I could properly form words with my mouth.

"Happy_ freaking _New Year," I scoffed into the cold December air. The sick humor I'd accumulated allowing me some small function besides the utter panic and severe depression I was bound to experience later.

I looked between the three of them then, my friends, Alice, Edward, and Bella. They stood still as stone, and though I understood they were something more, they still beheld so many of their human traits. Traits of kindness, of caring, of things that most humans seemed to lack. And in being who they are — the friends who have watched me grow in all the ways they no longer could — here they stood offering me another way of how I could go about… dying.

_Hey, what are friends for, right?_

"We can't fight what's happening to you. But we _can_ stop it in its tracks…" the voice trailed as my mind wandered off in various directions.

The idea of immortality floated idly above my head like some forbidden dream. Either way I went about it, I was bound to attain it.


End file.
